5-25-12: Judging the Judge

Judge Richard Bennet Carmichael thought he was defending the Constitution. President Abraham Lincoln thought Carmichael was “standing on [it] in one place so he could find a safe place to stab it.”

Needless to say, things did not resolve smoothly.

We talk with Adam Goodheart, director of the C.V. Starr Center for the Study of the American Experience at Washington College and author of 1861: The Civil War Awakening about the case of Judge Carmichael and the role of habeas corpus in the Civil War.